Photo By Yanelli Z. Robles / Staff
By Yanelli Z. Robles
Success has many fathers (mothers, too.) At Southwestern College success also has many kinds of faces. The college hosted a pair of commencement ceremonies that were a paragon of diversity in higher education populated with living, breathing (and walking) examples of the rich borderlands culture of South San Diego County.
There were brilliant dual enrolled teenagers barely old enough to drive, 20-somethings headed to universities, returning students in their 30s and 40s, parents, grandparents, formerly incarcerated and veterans from a panoply of cultures and a polyglot of languages. In other words, a typical South Bay gathering.
More than 800 students completed transfer degrees, certificates or other programs. Transfers are headed to California universities from SDSU to Humboldt and venerable national institutions as far away as Columbia in NYC and Southeastern HBCUs.
Many will use their new knowledge to serve locally, others will move far away to start new lives. Some—like Student Awards Ceremony keynote J. Michael Straczynski, the legendary science-fiction screenwriter and comic book author—will do both, moving away to find success, then coming home to share what they have learned during an adventurous lifetime.